Universal Orlando - Day 1

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a very long (and late) travel day

This trip was a surprise for Emmaline and, as hard as it was, we managed to keep it a secret from her. The day of the trip, she spent the afternoon with my mom while I packed, then my mom and Steve came back to the house to pick Roger and me up to take us to the airport, which is when we gave her an acceptance letter to Hogwarts that I had made.


She was in complete shock! I don’t think it sunk it for a bit! She was completely dazed all the way to the airport! It was pretty funny. I’m glad we managed to keep the secret. The rest of the day didn’t go so well. We were delayed boarding (for reasons I’m not clear on) then we got on board and pulled away from the gate, only to sit there for awhile. Finally the captain came on and said that we had a mechanical problem and would be pulling back in for the mechanical team to come back and check. We waited…. Finally the captain came back and said that we wouldn’t be able to use that plane, but that they had another one. By this time, it was getting really late for an already late flight.

We got off, went to another gate to got on a different airplane. While waiting to board the new airplane, I called our hotel, Royal Pacific and told them that we weren’t no shows and would be very late getting in because of flight issues. Originally scheduled to arrive at 10:35, we finally arrived in Orlando over an hour late, got a taxi and made it to our resort. We checked in and went to our room. I completely forgot everything the lady at the front desk said I was so tired.

We got to our room and Emmaline gravitated to a giant basket of candy and chips. “Don’t touch any of those! They’ll charge us a fortune!” I scolded. She said, “But Mama, there’s a card!” Indeed, there was a card apologizing for having a rough start to our vacation and hoping that the basket of goodies would make up for it. Wow! What a nice gesture! And it wasn’t even their fault we were so delayed! We crawled into bed, promising Emmaline we could have some treats the next day. It was after 1:00 AM!!

Click here for Day 2.

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